


Random Acts Of Kindness

by LananiA3O



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Damian gets slapped, Gen, TW: Dead Animals, lots of swearing, tw: animal burial, tw: mention of past animal cruelty, tw: mention of past child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: All he wanted to do was pick up some replacement parts for his AC that decided to break in the middle of a heat wave. When Jason's empathy makes him take a detour to perform a service to the public and Nightwing and Robin misinterpret his intentions, the crushing heat quickly becomes the least of his problems.





	Random Acts Of Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> So this is based on a real-life story, because we did actually have a massive heat wave this summer and I did have to walk past a cat that was left dead on the side of the road for two weeks. So here is your **trigger warning for this story: this story involves a dead cat and its burial and mentions the death of an innocent puppy.** Do not read if you don't think you can handle that. You have been warned.
> 
> Google search for this story: animal decomposition in hot weather
> 
> For status updates, writing trivia, fandom/fanfiction/writing related questions and occasional random ramblings, please visit my tumblr: http://lananiscorner.tumblr.com/

_Eight. Nine. Point. Six. – Seven. Eight. Point. Eight. – Zero. One. Colon. One. Four._

Jason frowned as he read the numbers, enunciating and visualizing them in his head. He tried to filter the glaring red of the display out of his mental image, but failed. He tried to ignore the obnoxiously loud whirring sound of the AC and the definitely-not-good rattling underneath that promised he’d have to take the damn thing apart to fix it… and failed even harder. Jason sighed.

‘Eighty-nine point six’ sounded way too harmless, way too low. The coldest water he had been able to get out of the shower today had been warm enough to wash a kitten. Ice cubes he had put in his drink after coming home from his daily morning run had melted between the fridge and his bed. The little herb garden by his kitchen window was positively deceased, expired, and gone to meet its maker. He would have said it was pushing daisies, except daisies would probably have died in the fucking box, too. Despite his best efforts, the only thing still alive in the pot was the fucking mint and he had half a mind to take a make-shift flamethrower to the damn plant, because if the fucking parsley and the dill didn’t make it, then mint, that fucking, fancy ass, clingy bitch didn’t deserve to either.

“Arson is wrong,” Jason muttered through clenched teeth. “Arson is wrong. Arson is wrong. Arson is wrong.”

Fuck, he hated arguing with the Lazarus-driven part of his brain that seemed hell-bent on causing the maximum amount of damage everywhere he went.

_No, we’re not gonna take a flamethrower to the highly combustible plant inside the highly combustible apartment in the middle of a fucking heat wave._

Yeah, according to the thermostat in the AC, it was eighty-nine, almost ninety, degrees in his apartment. Jason didn’t believe the bastard for a minute.

He didn’t believe the seventy-eight point eight degrees of external temperature, either. He had come home from patrol not even half an hour ago and surely seventy-eight, almost seventy-nine, degrees was not enough to make his combat pants cling to his thighs like molten cheese and pool his sweat into a tiny puddle at the bottom of his mask.

And yet he still kept the window open. For any other Gothamite, it would have been an insanely asinine move, bordering on an application for a Darwin award. Or at least a burglary. Which had a habit of ending deadly in this city. Definitely Darwin award.

But then again, he was Red Hood, fucking scourge of the Gotham underworld, the blood-red bat, Batman With Guns, ‘the one you don’t fuck with’, as the last crook he had taken apart by the docks had put it. God have fuckin’ mercy on the poor soul who would try to burgle his apartment. Unless it was Selina, but then again… Jason looked around. There was _nothing_ there for Selina to steal, unless her taste had recently switched from Swarovski to Salvation Army.

Jason sighed. This summer was fucking bullshit. Okay, Gotham summers were always hot and this _was_ the middle of August, but it was also _quarter past one in the fucking morning_. Air had no business being seventy-nine degrees hot at quarter past one in the fucking morning, much less ninety degrees, and yet here he was.

Fuck.

He rolled over again and closed his eyes, trying to imagine winter and snow and ice and wind and Bruce’s stare of disappointment. It didn’t work. The cold wouldn’t come. Some morbid, Lazarus-infected jackass part of his brain actually had the audacity to suggest thinking of being six feet under again, but all that did was remind him of the fire with other red numbers that came before the grave and the wet, flowing fire that came after it. What annoyed Jason the most about the ordeal was that he should have known better. He knew his temporal lobe was a dick.

The only thing that was possibly more infuriating was the part of his lizard brain that decided coping mechanisms from the times of mammoths and cave dwellings were adequate for the twenty-first century and y-fronts only was no substitute for full body fur, and insisted that he have something to cover himself with when he slept, less the cold, bitter, elements claimed his life.

What a fucking joke.

Jason pushed the comforter off the bed, drew the top sheet over his hips and tried to sleep once more.

He had made it all the way to the fifty-fourth sheep when he heard a cracking sound, followed by a thud coming from the window. Jason sighed.

The burglar had not expected him to be awake, obviously. He also hadn#t expected him to be two-hundred pounds of sweaty, angry muscle whose fuse had already grown too short. Jason made quick work of him, breaking his wrist as he wrestled the crowbar out the man’s hand and then pushing him out of the window. He yelped as he grasped for the fire escape and managed to break his fall just enough to only crack a few ribs and dislocate a shoulder upon impact with the ground. Jason scoffed and tossed the crowbar after him.

“Get lost, you fucking idiot and don’t ever come back!”

He watched the burglar shuffle off in pain, both the crowbar and his target already forgotten. Jason slammed the window shut and turned the key.

Great. Now his apartment was really going to turn into an oven. Jason sighed as he marched over to the fuse box and flipped the circuit breaker for the bedroom sockets. If he was going to find any sleep, he’d have to fix the damn AC. Now.

Getting it off the wall was easy, although Jason supposed it would have been a nightmare to the average home owner. It didn’t seem heavy to him. What got him were the fucking screws. He had counted forty-eight by the time he had reached the fans and even though he had been careful to lay them out sorted by thickness and length, he was almost certain he was going to fuck up something while putting the damn thing back together again.

Unfortunately, the fans were fine. Jason groaned as he disconnected the motor from its sockets and links (too damn many) and shook it softly. The metallic clonk he got in return didn’t make it better.

Another fourteen screws later, Jason had finally found the culprit: a broken bolt. Jason fetched the ruler and a piece of paper from his laundry and housekeeping cabinet and jotted down the numbers carefully. If he was lucky, the 24/7 convenience store eight blocks down Tanners Road might carry little boxes of assorted screws, nuts, and bolts. If he was lucky, he could fix this today.

***

The streets were almost deserted at this time of day, but Jason knew better than to think he was alone as he headed down the road in the most light-weight set of exercise clothes he owned. Even despite the early morning hour, even despite the unbearable heat, there was life in Gotham’s streets, in the dimly lit, acrid-smelling alleys off to the side, in the corners where one building stood just a bit closer to the road than the others, and behind the boarded up windows of buildings as condemned as the people who dwelled in them.

There _was_ life in Gotham at this hour, but none that anyone would have wanted to experience first hand.

He was halfway down the hill-side when another stench, assaulted his nose. This one wasn’t acrid, sharp. It was heavy and… pushing… like heavy fog on a fall morning that would simply refuse to lift until the sun stood high enough. It was the kind of smell that required a basket full of lemons to wash off.

“Unbelievable…” Jason muttered over a deeply held breath as he walked by as quickly as he could. How long had the body been here now? Four days? Five? He was pretty sure it was five. He had sent notifications to Gotham Sanitation and Waste Management every day and yet it was still the same. “This fucking city…”

He went into the 24/7 looking for a box of assorted bolts. He came out with the box, a net full of lemons, two bottles of bleach, a towel, a big paper bag, a pair of heavy-duty gloves, and a spade. The lemons and the bolts went into his backpack. The rest stayed in the paper bag. The look on the cashier’s face had been priceless. Jason knew what was going through his mind. It would have been obvious to anyone who saw the shopping list.

In the end, Jason wasn’t surprised at all when he noticed that he was being followed. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be pissed.

“Come out already, you fucking coward!”

A shadow dropped onto the street light up ahead. Another dropped down two feet to his left, landing on the right, landing on the cracked, dried-out asphalt without a sound. He didn’t have to look. He could tell from the lack of swishing as it followed his own quick strides that the shadow did not wear a cape.

“I’m not in a mood for games. What do you want, Nightfling?”

“The bigger question is: what do you want with two bottles of bleach and a spade?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Nightwing.” The little demon brat dropped off his perch just as he was about to pass and planted himself right in front of Jason’s path, arms crossed, back straight, scowl on his face. “The real question is: who did Todd kill this time?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You weigh what? A hundred pounds when soaked? If you think I won’t punch you into the nearest wall just because you’re half my size, you’re outta your mind.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian said through bared teeth, “you already shot me once.”

“Yeah…” Jason returned the gesture. “Pity I left my Glocks at home.”

“Jason…” If Dick hadn’t been pissed before, he was now. Great. Jason sighed. He had only gone out to get a stupid replacement bolt for his stupid AC. Why did the universe hate him enough to put these two in his way now? “I’m not gonna ask again: What do you want with the bleach and the spade?”

Jason paused for a moment, looking Dick over from head to toe, stepped to the side, around Damian, and continued walking. Dick could intimidate all he want. Even Nightwing couldn’t get away with attacking an unarmed, not-involved-in-any-active-crime civilian on the street. The times when being Jason Todd was easier than Red Hood were few and far in between. This was one of them.

“Robin, stop—“ The hushed voices grew softer as he continued up the hill.

“Don’t be a fool, Grayson—“ But they didn’t stop.

“Field names!” Just what he needed.

“We cannot just let him—“ At least until the smell started.

The footsteps, though barely audible to begin with, stopped just a second after the whispering. Jason relished the blissful silence as he approached the body. The stench was bad enough. Having the prodigal son and the blood son provide live commentary would have really spoiled his mood.

He started with the towel, laying it out neatly next to the body, then emptied the rest of the paper bag and put on the gloves.

The body had started to bloat and felt both stiff and squishy at the same time under his fingers. Jason silently thanked whatever deity had taken pity on him that the poor thing had apparently died of natural courses, rather than an injury. Dried blood would have made prying it off the sidewalk a pain in the ass. He swallowed the curses that came to his mind as he tried to ignore that oh-so-familiar odor of putrefaction. The last thing he needed right now was a mouth full of flies. Jason wrapped the towel around the carcass with as much care as the gloves allowed and shoved it into the paper bag, followed by the spade. Last but not least, he opened the first bottle of bleach and poured it over the spot where the poor animal had lain.

For five fucking days. Jesus Christ.

Jason took the bag in one hand and the remaining bottle of bleach in the other. Then he continued walking. This time, there were no hushed voices. Only soft footsteps.

***

The park looked even more forlorn than the streets, with not a soul in sight for at least a hundred yards. Good, this was going to be much easier without interference.

It didn’t take long to find a good spot. Four weeks of draught had left one of Gotham’s few green patches a barren yellow. It made the few man-made artifacts stand out much more in the darkness. The benches. The trash cans. The monuments. The mile markers. The commemorative stones.

The one he ended up picking had been placed in honor of Miss Helena Peters’ generous donations to various wildlife charities in Gotham. He wondered if the city new that it was one of Catwoman’s aliases.

“You won’t mind, Selena, will you?” Jason muttered as he lifted the stone and moved it aside just far enough to make sufficient room for shuffling. “It’s for a cat after all.”

And the area that had been covered by the stone was the perfect size for a cat grave. Jason tested the ground with his fingers first. It felt dry, too, though not as much as the rest of the park probably was and that was good. It made digging easier. Jason grabbed the spade and got to work. He had to dig a one-by-two-by-three foot hole without anyone but the two nosy Bats seeing him. This was a race against time and the sooner he started the better.

“You’re burying your dead cat in a public park twelve blocks from your safe-house?”

“Not my fucking cat,” Jason snapped back without looking up as he kept on shoveling. The ground was dry enough to make him work for his imaginary money and the night was still insufferably hard. It didn’t even take him a minute to feel the sweat running down his back. “If it was, I wouldn’t have left it rotting in the street for five days.”

“Her,” the demon brat insisted and there was a note of indignation to his voice that wanted to make Jason laugh and say ‘I’m talking about a cat and not your fucking mother’. “You should not have left _her_ rotting for five days in any case. That is just heartless, even for you.”

Now that made him pause. Jason stabbed the spade into the ground to his right and inspected the hole for a moment—one foot down, two to go—before turning to Robin.

“You think I’m the only one who walked by this cat for five days, you little half-pint? Newsflash: there’s about at least four hundred people walking down that street on any given day. None of them did anything. You know why? Because it’s not their fucking job to handle road kill. That’s for the city to take care of. And I _did_ sent a message to Gotham Sanitation and Waste Management every d—“

“WASTE MANAGEMENT?!” It was hard to tell in the dark, but Jason was sure the brat’s face had just turned an amazing shade of angry red. “How dare you! A cat is not waste! She is not trash!”

“Robin—“

“Maybe I should stick you in a dumpster and—“

“Damian, enough!” suddenly, Dick was there, grabbing the kid by the shoulders and whirling him around. His face was set in a tight frown, but Jason could read the tenderness in the grip and it made his heart ache. Once upon a time... once upon a long, looooong time Dick had been like that to him. Once. And never again. “I know you love animals, but Jason is actually right this time.”

He wanted to give back some biting remark. Maybe something about how that almost sounded like Dick actually gave him the benefit of the doubt for once, or how nice it was that the implication was that he was wrong about everything else, or how they should take their brotherly bonding session elsewhere because he was not in the mood for it (and probably never would be, although he was never going to voice that thought to any of them).

Instead, Jason continued shoveling.

“If a pet dies, it’s the owner’s responsibility to either bury the body _in a place where that is legally allowed_ ,” Dick finally continued. Jason ignored the barbed tone of the last half of that sentence. Dick could go sit on one of his escrima sticks if this was the hill he wanted to die on. “But if it’s a wild animal, city regulations state that waste management services should be called to remove the body instead, before it becomes a health risk.”

“But...” _Shit._ Jason paused for a moment. Two feet down. One to go. The fucking brat actually sounded like he wanted to cry. “But animals aren’t waste! They are living, breathing creatures!”

“Not by the time you call GSWM on them,” Jason muttered absent-mindedly as he cleared out the last foot of dirt. Only when he raised his head out of that hole and came face to face with the angriest, tearful case of scowl under cowl that he had ever seen did it occur to him that he had said that out loud. The helpful solution his brain supplied was “technically, I mean.”

Apparently, that was the last straw. Robin lunged forward. Jason instinctively grabbed the spade harder. Bad for stabbing, but he could probably give the kid a good concussion, if he had to.

Thankfully, Nightwing jumped in immediately, tackling him to the ground. “Damian, no!”

“Let go of me, Grayson!”

“Only if you stop fighting!”

“He’s a heartless monster!” Damian growled back. “We should dig that hole deeper and put _him_ in there, rather than the cat!”

Suddenly, the sound of a slap rang sharp through the air. Jason turned his head and found Dick crouched in front of Robin, one hand over his mouth, the other on Robin’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Damian.” He sounded as horrified as he looked. “I shouldn’t have hit you, I’m sorry.”

But it seemed to have done the job. Jason had a good idea why. He had seen Talia slap people before. There was a good chance some Pavlovian reflex was at work here. No wonder Dick was repulsed at having tapped into that, even if on accident.

“What Jason just said was very sarcastic and pretty mean,” Dick eventually explained calmly as the initial shock subsided. Ever the big brother. It made Jason feel sick. “But he’s doing something very kind and selfless right now, so just let him work, okay? Let’s not fight over the corpse of a poor dead cat.”

The mention of the feline seemed to have done the trick. Jason watched on warily as Robin took a deep breath, unclenched his fists, and nodded slowly.

He came over and knelt down just as Jason finished wrestling the towel-wrapped cat out of the bag and into the grave. He tried to ignore the fact that it looked too damn familiar. He tried to remember that it was just a cat in a towel, not a boy in a coffin. He tried to tell himself that his hand wasn’t shaking even just a little.

He was about to start shoveling the dirt back in when Robin reached down, all but falling into the hole, and peeled back the towel just enough to reveal a thin, black paw and the black-and-white head.

“Was she a random stray or does she at least have a name?”

Jason paused. There were many cats in the neighborhood, yet this one had never crossed his path until the day he found her lying at the edge of the sidewalk, all fours stretched out. “If she does, I don’t know it.”

He wanted to say something else, about not touching dead bodies, but it seemed kind of ridiculous, given the profession they were in. Robin had probably inspected half a dozen corpses this week already.

“She looks like an Emily,” Damian said quietly, and for the first time since Jason had met him, he actually sounded tiny. Vulnerable. Like a normal kid in front of a dead pet. “Farewell Emily. I hope you’ll rest in peace.”

Jason waited until Robin had moved the towel back into place and withdrawn his hand, then poured half the bottle of bleach over the carcass and started shoveling. By now, every single inch of his shirt stuck to him in the damn heat and all he wanted was to go home and get a shower. With the lemons. He didn’t even want to imagine what all that Kevlar on Nightwing and Robin had to feel like right now.

When the hole was full again, Jason pressed down on the dirt, added another spade to even it out, and stood up to grab the stone. This time, Dick reached down at the other end and the  boulder was back in place in a snap, covering up the disturbed ground nicely enough that no passerby would be able to tell the difference. This was a grave only they would know about. Dick. Jason. Damian.

Damian, who was still looking at the patch as if he wanted to dig the poor thing out and take her home. Jason shoveled the excess dirt into the paper bag, followed by his gloves. Then, he poured the last half bottle into it for good measure.

“First time you buried a pet, huh?”

 _What the actual fuck?_ He wanted to slap himself. Why did he have to engage now? The job was done. All he had to do was find the nearest dumpster—trash cans were too obvious—to dump the bag into and go home. What on Earth had made him think that re-engaging now was a good idea?

He was faintly aware of Damian nodding in silence as they left the park. Why Dick had not yet decided they should go home, before Damian would jump at him again or vice versa, Jason did not know. All he knew was that he wanted to get rid of the damn bag. He headed out of the park and into the nearest piss-smelling alley, where the bag finally disappeared into a big, gray dumpster.

Jason contemplated going back the way he had come, then decided to head up the fire escapes to the rooftops and take the short way back instead. _As the Robin flies_. He gave one quick look around to verify that neither Dick nor Damian were following him, then started sprinting across the rooftops.

Ten minutes later, Jason opened the door to his apartment and made a beeline for the kitchen, where he halved the lemons he had bought and scrubbed his hands and face until he was sure the last whiffs of death had disappeared.

When he returned to the table where he had left the AC, Nightwing was waiting for him.

“Broken AC in this weather? Man, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

“And yet here I am with a broken AC. In this weather,” Jason snapped back as he sat down and dug the bolt case out of his backpack. Hopefully one of these was going to fit.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Dick said quietly. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“Uh-huh...” For once, the universe had shown mercy. Jason sighed in relief as he found a bolt of matching thickness and almost exact length and fitted it into the motor. “So what are you still doing here? And where’s the demon brat?”

“I had Cass pick him up,” Dick handed him the motor casing panel he had been reaching for. “Told her to take him home. You know... to his very much alive cat.”

“Not my fault you guys decided to stick around for the funeral.” The motor was whole again. Jason wanted to cry for joy. Okay, he still had to test the thing, but at least now he had hope. A teeny tiny slither of hope.

“Jason...” Dick handed him the pair of screws he had been going for and took off the mask. That was enough to make him pause. Dick never took off his mask while still in the suit. “I want to apologize.”

Jason stopped screwing the motor back into its sockets and raised an eyebrow. “Ex-fucking-cuse me?”

“I’m sorry.” Dick ran a hand through his hair. “When I saw you with that spade and the bleach in the bag, I thought...”

“You thought I was about to bury a body.”

“Well, yeah—“

“And I did.”

“Yeah, but not a human body.”

“Of course not.” Jason went back to work and started reconnecting the fans to the motor. “If I wanted to get rid of a fucking human body, I wouldn’t go for a burial. Burn the fucker or dump him into acid. Otherwise he might just come back in six months.”

That made Dick flinch. There was a part of Jason that wanted to ask why. Why did speaking of his return from the dead still make everyone so uncomfortable, even after all these years? Was it because it should have been physically impossible? Was it because of how he had come back, having to dig his way out of the coffin they had put him in? Or was it because they wished he never had?

Part of him wondered. The rest of him screamed to drop the topic and never ever, ever ask. He didn’t want to know. Dear fucking Jesus Christ, he did not want that answer.

“I just wanted to say...” Dick’s face was a good shade paler now, but his voice was calm again. Frustratingly, irritatingly calm. It made Jason want to punch him in the teeth. “... what you did tonight... that was very kind of you, even if it was mildly illegal. And while I think that it messed up Damian pretty badly, I’m actually kind of glad that the first pet burial he had to see was done by somebody else for a pet that was not his.”

“My biggest brotherly contribution,” Jason said sarcastically as he screwed the front panel of the AC shut. Hallelujah. It was done. Now he just needed to mount the damn thing back onto the wall. “Teaching the young’uns how to get rid of a body.”

For a solid minute, Dick sat in silence. Jason was aware of his half-exasperated, half-concerned stare of brotherly worry as Jason placed the AC back on the wall mount and reconnected the power. He flicked the circuit breaker back into position and was greeted by the satisfying purr of a smoothly running motor, good as new. The fresh air from the AC felt like heaven.

“And you’re right,” Dick said quietly. He picked up the pieces of the broken bolt and turned them over aimlessly in his hand. “That was Damian’s first pet burial. Technically, it was my first one, too. I mean... we had lots of pets at the zoo, but every time one of them died, Haly fed them to the lions, kind of ‘circle of life’ thing, you know.”

“Yeah, somehow I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over too well with the brat.” Jason wasn’t sure what exactly possessed him to grab two bottles of lemonade from the fridge instead of one and push one across the table to Dick. Perhaps it was the re-occurring thought that, holy fuck, all that Kevlar was a right royal bitch in this heat. “Wasn’t my first one, sadly.”

And dear fucking mother of god, why did he have to say that? Now Dick was looking at him with that mild curiosity in his eyes, just curious enough to tell him that he wanted to hear more, but not pushing enough to actually use words. Then again, that had never been the strong suit of anyone in this fucking family.

“Did I ever tell you I had a puppy when I was a kid?”

“No.” A quick grin flashed on Dick’s lips. “What was his name?”

“Sparky.” Jason took a sip from his lemonade. “He was... I don’t know what he was. Probably a bit of a retriever and some kind of terrier... I honestly don’t know. Found him licking his injured paw in the alley behind our apartment complex, so I took him in and took care of him.”

He could see Dick’s face fall, just a little. He was doing the math. If Jason had still been living in an apartment complex, than it must have been before his mom died. Before he turned twelve. And if Sparky had been a puppy then, the chances of him having died of natural courses were slim to none. _Fuck the 24/7 detective work in this family._

“What happened?”

Jason grimaced. “Dad came home drunk one night, hit mom, tried to hit me. Sparky got angry and snapped at him.” A shudder ran down his arms. Willis hadn’t been drunk a lot, but when he had been, it had been like playing Russian roulette. You never knew what you were going to get. Only that it wasn’t going to be good. “So dad grabbed Sparky and tossed him out the window.”

The mild inkling of dread on Dick’s face morphed into full-blown horror. “Oh my god—“

“We were living on the sixth floor, by the way,” Jason continued. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“Jason...”

“I know... I know...” Jason downed the rest of his lemonade. It tasted bitter. “This is horrible. You’re so sorry I had to live through that. My dad was a bastard. Bla  bla  bla bla. It’s ok, Dick, really.” Strangely enough, part of him actually believed that. It was anything but a happy memory, but somehow, given everything else that had happened in his life, it seemed too distant to matter.  He stood up and tossed the bottle into the nearest bin. “Sometimes shitty people do shitty things that hurt you and there’s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is move forward. I just learned that lesson a bit earlier than most.”

He had expected a lot of things. Jason had known Dick for a long time, after all. He had expected him to keep on talking. He had expected him to become angry on Jason’s behalf. Contrary to what most people thought, Dick Grayson was actually very good at getting angry.

What Jason had not expected was the mother of all friendly hugs. Alright, it was slightly gross, what with the persistent smell of sweat that clung to Dick thanks to the suit, but still. It had been a long, long time since anyone in the family had hugged him. It had been a long time since anyone had hugged Jason, period.

“Okay...” He gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Why...”

“Because you looked like you needed one,” Dick said, almost sheepishly, as he finally let go of him. “You think you got a monopoly on random kindness?”

“No, but I do have a monopoly on this apartment,” Jason replied tersely. It was more bark than bite. “It’s been one hell of a night. Go home, Dick. Try not to pass out from heat exhaustion along the way.”

That made Dick laugh. Jason watched as he nodded and gave a quick goodbye, before escaping out the window, up the fire escape and into the night. He locked the window once more, double-checked to make sure the front door was locked and bolted, and headed for a cold shower.

And all of this just because of a rattling AC.


End file.
